“I’m sure there were a thousand other people at Five Mountains yesterday who might have a hard time proving they were there,” I said. “She was there with me, and then she disappeared.”

“Have you taken a lie detector test?” asked a rumpled reporter I was pretty sure was from Albany.

“No,” I said.

“Did you refuse to take it?”

“No one’s asked me to take one,” I said.

The more beautiful TV reporter jumped in, “Would you take one?”

“I just told you, no one’s asked me-”

“Would you take one if we set it up?” the less beautifully coiffed TV reporter asked.

“I don’t see any reason why I would sit down with you-”

“So you’re refusing, then? You don’t want to take any questions about your wife’s disappearance while hooked up to a polygraph machine?”

“This is ridiculous,” I said. I was losing control of this. I’d been a fool to think I could walk into this and escape unscathed. You think, because you’re a reporter, you know the tricks. Then you find out you’re no smarter than anyone else.

Samantha, sensing what was happening to me, tried to help by breaking in with a soft question: “David,” she said, “can you tell me how you’re bearing up under this? It must be a terrible strain for you and for your son.”

I nodded. “It’s horrible. Not knowing… it’s terrible. I’ve never been through anything like this before. You have no idea until you’re experiencing it yourself.”

“How does it feel,” she continued, “being the subject of a story instead of the one covering it? All of us here, ganging up on you like this, it must seem kind of weird.”

The TV reporters gave Sam a dirty look when she said “ganging up.”

I almost smiled. “It’s okay, I know how it works. Look, I really have to go.”

The reporters opened a path for me as I moved forward. I took Sam by the elbow and brought her along with me, which brought some grumbles from the rest of the pack. What the hell was I doing? Giving her an exclusive?

“Dave, I feel real bad about this,” she said as we went up the stairs to my parents’ front door. “You know I’m just doing-”

“I get it,” I said. Before I could open the door, Mom had swung it open. She’d aged a couple of years since I’d seen her earlier in the day, and she gave Sam a withering look.

“Hi, Mom,” I said. “You remember Sam.” They’d met several times when we were going together.

Mom didn’t return Sam’s nod. She clearly viewed Sam, in her professional role, as the enemy.

“Where’s Ethan?” I asked.

Mom said, “Your father took him out. They went for something to eat and then he was going to take Ethan down by the tracks to see some real trains. I told him I’d call when things quieted down around here.”

That seemed like a pretty good plan to me. I was glad Ethan had been taken away from all this.

I said to Samantha, “Look, thanks for that question out there. It helped smooth things over a bit.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ve got to do this story but I’m not out to get you.”

“I appreciate that.”

“I mean, I know you would never do anything to Jan.” She studied me. “Right?”

“Jesus, Sam.”

“I really don’t think you would.”

“Thanks for the halfhearted vote of confidence.”

The corners of her mouth turned up. “I have to at least pretend to be objective. But I’m on your side, I swear. But I can’t promise the desk won’t have its way with this story once I turn it in. Which reminds me.” She looked at her watch. It was ten after eight. I knew she had until about nine-thirty to turn in a story and still make the first print edition.

“What did you want to tell me?” she asked. “I mean, if you’re giving me some kind of exclusive, I’ll take it. This is your paper, after all.”

“You need to watch your back,” I said.

“What?”

“I don’t mean you’re in any danger or anything, but you have to be careful. I think Madeline’s monitoring all the email.”

“What?” Sam’s jaw dropped. “The publisher is reading my personal email?”

“If it’s through the paper’s system, yeah, I think so.”

“Holy shit,” she said. “Why? Why do you think that?”

“I received an anonymous email the other day, a woman wanting to talk to me, about the prison proposal, about members of council taking bribes or whatever in exchange for a favorable vote.”

“Okay.”

“It landed in my mailbox, I only had it there for a few minutes before I purged it from the system. But Elmont Sebastian, he knew about it. He knew someone had tried to get in touch with me. I wondered at first whether he got tipped at the other end, from where this woman got in touch with me, but I don’t think so. I think he got the tip from the Standard. And who else but Madeline would have the authority to read everyone’s email?”

“Why would she want to do that?”

“She might not be interested in yours, but she’d have a reason to be interested in mine. The Russell family, they’ve got land they want to sell to Star Spangled Corrections for that prison. It’s not in our own paper’s interest to take a run at them. I think when Madeline saw that email, she let Sebastian know.”

“What about Brian?” she asked. “Maybe Madeline’s got him looking into the emails. She’s in his office all the time.”

I thought about that. “That’s possible. The bottom line is, our publisher can’t be trusted. You just need to know that.”

“I was kind of kidding when I said the desk might have its way with this story, but now I think they really might. Are they going to slant this thing with Jan to make you look even worse? Because you owned that prison story. Once you’re out of the picture, how likely is it someone else is going to take it up?”

“I don’t know.” I didn’t tell her the lengths Elmont Sebastian had already gone to stop me. A job offer. Veiled threats against my son. I hadn’t given up on the theory that he had something to do with what had happened to Jan, but I couldn’t put it together in a way that made sense.

“I gotta go,” Sam said. “I’ve got to file this thing.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with Jan’s disappearance,” I said one last time.

She put a hand softly on my chest. “I know. I believe. I’m not going to sell you out with this story.”

She left.

Mom said, “I don’t like her.”

By the time I pulled into the driveway of my own house, it was nine. There were no media types camped out there. They’d all gotten what they needed at my parents’ place and were going to give me some peace, at least for the rest of this evening.

Ethan had fallen asleep on the way home. I carefully lifted him out of his seat and he rested his head on my shoulder as I took him into the house. The moment I came through the door, I was instantly reminded that the house had been searched by the police earlier in the day. Sofa cushions were tossed about, books removed from shelves, carpets pulled back. It didn’t look as though anything was actually damaged, but there was a lot of straightening up to do.

I laid Ethan gently on the couch and covered him with a throw blanket. Then I went upstairs and made some sense of his room. I put the mattress back in place, toys back in bins, clothes back in drawers.

It looked bad when I started, but only took fifteen minutes to tidy it up. I went back down, picked him up off the couch, and brought him up to his bed. I placed him on his back and undressed him. I’d have thought pulling a shirt up over his head would have awakened him, but he slept through all the jostling. I found his Wolverine pajamas and got them on him, then slipped him under the covers, tucked them in around him, and kissed him lightly on the forehead.

Without opening his eyes, he whispered sleepily, “Good night, Mommy.”